Collapse of Hotel New World
1986 building collapse caused by a calculation error which killed 33 people in Singapore
The collapse of Hotel New World was a civil disaster that occurred in Singapore on 15 March 1986. The Hotel New World was a six-story building situated at the junction of Serangoon Road and Owen Road in the Rochor district when it suddenly collapsed, trapping 50 people beneath the rubble. 33 people died and 17 people were rescued.
Background
The Lian Yak Building (Chinese: 联益大厦) was completed in 1971 and consisted of six storeys and a basement garage. The Hotel New World, previously known as the New Serangoon Hotel until 1984, was the main tenant occupying the top four floors, and a branch of the Industrial & Commercial Bank (ICB) took up the ground level. A nightclub, Universal Neptune Nite-Club and Restaurant, was situated on the second level of the building at the time of the collapse.
The building had previously experienced a carbon monoxide gas leak in some of the hotel rooms on 29 August 1975, hospitalising 35 guests. Various witnesses, such as contractors and the night club's watchman, reported cracks in the building's walls between 1974 to 1983, though structural issues had not yet been observed. One day before the Lian Yak Building collapsed, a large crack appeared on a pillar at the nightclub and exposed the pillar's bricks. A mirror, installed on a column in the nightclub's dressing room, also spontaneously cracked, and the column's plywood panelling was bulging to the right.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Collapse of Hotel New World” as 1986 building collapse caused by a calculation error which killed 33 people in Singapore. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as 1986 building collapse caused by a calculation error which killed 33 people in Singapore. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1630982. Authority coordinates are 1.312, 103.855. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986, 1971, 1984 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Collapse of Hotel New World” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.